So I’m not sure that I’ve gone this long between postings since I started this little blog 2 1/2 years ago.

Time is flying and the days are a blur.  I truly cannot believe that 10 days have passed since I last sat down to write something.

Anywho…

Since I still have a stack of things on my agenda today, I’m going to activate my bullet function and do the list thing.

Here we go…

• We’re in the middle of a most exciting time in the life of our church.  We’ve been bursting at the seams during our second service, and now we’re about to add a full Children’s Ministry to the first service, which previously had none.  This will kick in February 21…just two weeks from now.  We’re going to shift our service times 30 minutes later to help make that early service easier for folks with kiddos to get to.  And we’re trying to finish the build-out of the back room in time for it all.  Whew.  It’s some crazy, busy stuff…but a total blast.
• God blew us away this week.  With our COBRA coverage expiring on March 20th, the church board asked me to begin to look for an insurance policy for our family.  After shopping for private policies 17 months ago…and spending untold hours applying and talking to different insurance companies…I learned that both Doug and Noah are uninsurable under any private policy.  Group coverage was…and forever will be (unless things change) their only option.  So after following a few leads from other Calvary Chapels, I contacted a company in California that writes policies for churches…and does a lot of business with Calvary Chapels.  When I made first contact with the company, I was discouraged to learn that their policies are medically underwritten…meaning that they might deny coverage for certain health conditions.  I was quite upfront with the representative…spelling out all of our medical history and Doug and Noah’s history of being denied for health and life insurance.  He very kindly told me to fill out the application anyway…to be as detailed as possible…and that they would look over it.  Imagine our shock and awe and THANKFULNESS when we found out a few days ago that they are offering our family a wonderful group policy with very competitive rates.  We are still waiting on the details to be finalized, but our new policy should kick well before our COBRA coverage expires.  Can I get a woo-hoo? God is GOOD.
• The above paragraph means that I actually can look forward to the end of my endometriosis/adenomyosis/JUST RIP IT ALL OUT saga.  Our new policy will be with Blue Cross/Blue Shield and guess who is in network with BC/BS?  Yep.  The endometriosis/laparoscopic supracervical hysterectomy specialist in Atlanta that I would like to go to.  How awesome is that?!  When the pain that I have been dealing with for so long woke me up at 5 o’clock this morning, I started smack talking the thing.  “Enjoy it now, you little freaky uterus”…said I.  “Your days are numbered”.  “You are going to get chopped up and yanked out through my belly button and you ain’t gonna bother me NO MORE”.  “HA”.
• I’m just sayin’.
• So have you heard about how gold prices are really high right now and how you can sell your gold at a jewelry shop or gold party or mail it in for cash?  Yeah, so have I.  I’ve thought about it, but didn’t move on it until my Mom told me how she went to a local jewelry shop and made over 300 bucks selling old scrap pieces of jewelry…most of it broken or missing the matching piece.  I went home and promptly dug out some of my old 80’s bling…a gold coin ring (?!) and a groovy gold bracelet.  I took it to the jeweler and he gave me $103 cash for the pieces.  Nice.  I’ll really miss that gold coin pimp ring, but I think that I can learn to live without it.
• I booked another camp week for Noah at the Halo Clinic.  My Mom, Noah and I will be going the last week of March to work with Erika.  Can’t wait.  Right now I’m reading the Boxcar Children with Noah and my Mom is studying the Middle Ages with him.  I’m still having a hard time figuring out how to get him to spell for me, but he is nailing it on the comprehension end of it all.  So I guess it’s just a matter of time.

Well…there’s lots more, but I really need to keep moving.

Ya’ll have a great weekend, and hopefully it won’t be another 15 days before I’m back here again…

So for the past few months, I seem to have lost my blogging mojo.

I’m not really sure why.  Busyness is an easy explanation…I just don’t have a whole lot of time to get on the computer lately.  But I’ve always been busy so I’m not so sure that the answer is that simple.  Writer’s block…half-baked brain…who knows?

anywho…

Here’s a little bit of what’s been going on…

The Calvary Chapel Pastor’s Conference was amazing…Doug and I were there Monday-Wednesday.  8 of our church leaders and their wives came too…it was an incredible time of teaching and fellowship and FUN and bonding.  The boys stayed with my parents, which was of course a huge blessing for us…and for the boys.  They had a blast.

Doug is still getting extra work, even though the busy Christmas season is over.  Dapper Dans has called him four times since the new year and his group just booked an out of town corporate gig next month.  Woo-hoo for that.

Our house is just about ready to go back on the market.  We’ve got a few decisions left to make about pricing and realtor stuff, but hopefully we’ll wrap that up quickly and get back in the game.  Our neighborhood market got very interesting over the weekend when our next door neighbor’s realtor screwed up his price drop and listed his house on the MLS…for three days…at $3.95 million.  We had quite a few cars doing the slow drive past his house over the weekend and I’m quite sure that they were all very confused.

Today at Publix, there was an extremely pregnant young lady checking out in front of us.  To my horror, Isaac looked over, pointed and hollered, “WHOA, MOM!  That’s a big ‘ol belly!”  As my eyes bugged out and my mouth dropped to the floor, he continued…”How come she has such a big ‘ol belly?”

oh. my.

Shouldn’t a trap door come standard in all grocery stores?

Well…thank you Lord…the lady with the big ‘ol belly was fully engaged in conversation with the cashier and did not seem to notice Isaac’s little outburst.  And…thankfully…my quick and matter of fact answer that “she’s got a baby in her belly” elicited only a few eye blinks from Isaac in response.  I did NOT want to get into the “hows” and “whys” of the baby in the big ‘ol belly on this particular day.

Well…that’s my occasional post for today.

I hope that your week is going beautifully…

So I don’t have a Facebook account, but if I did, I would post the following comments…

• Happy 5th Anniversary, Calvary Chapel of the Lakes…

• Listening to four children crack up at Donald Duck cartoons.  Jason and Ella are over while Lori and Hank finish up their flooring project…

• Leave Monday morning for the Calvary Chapel Pastor’s Conference.  Can’t wait…

• House is almost ready to put back on the market.  Just a little more elbow grease in the kitchen and a few bags of mulch in the front yard and it will be good to go…

• Thrilled to see that the company that owns Legoland has purchased Cypress Gardens.  Isaac still asks when Cypress Gardens will open up again.  Here’s hoping that I can tell him that it’s not only re-opening…it’s coming back with Legos…

Well…that’s about all that my gnat-sized attention span can manage for now.

Ya’ll have a great weekend and I’ll attempt to write a “real” post sometime soon…

So I’m absolutely loving this freakishly cold weather.

Anybody else?

It’s just so crispy and fun.

anywho…

Noah is back in school.  He was quite happy to return on Monday, and his teacher reported that he did not miss a beat and went right back to work and is doing well.

Isaac and I have been staying fairly close to home, which has been rather nice and cozy.  He got some Looney Tunes DVDs for Christmas…his first introduction to Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Marvin the Martian and his Illudium Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator.  (In fact, Isaac has renamed the Space Shuttle the “Space Modulator”.  oh. my.)   I have been laughing myself stupid watching all the episodes with him and I’m loving watching him crack up at it all.  That’s some funny stuff.

After taking about five years off, I have started making bread again.  I used to make it all the time in my bread maker…mixing different recipes from scratch.  When Noah went gluten free/casein free, I let it go and mothballed my bread machine.   A few weeks ago, after eating some super yummy bread that my brother in law Hank made, I decided that it was time to pull the bread machine out of hiding and get back into it.  My first attempt to replicate Hank’s recipe was an epic fail…resulting in what was essentially a giant crouton.  I pitched the brick and tried again.  Next attempt…ahhhh.  It’s a wheat loaf with sunflower and flax seeds and oatmeal…yummmmmmmy.  Doug is all happy about it too.  After I practice a while on “regular” bread, I plan to attempt to make some bread that Noah can eat.  That should be fun.

We’re getting ready to stick our house back on the market.  More on that later.

Well…that’s all I’ve got for today.

Ya’ll stay warm and cozy…

I have yet to talk to anyone who is mournful about the passing of 2009.

Was that a crazy year, or what?

For our family, it was a year of transition…and a year of incredible blessing.

At times, the “transition” part of our lives was a bit stressful for me.  After being so “settled” as a wife of a Pastor who was also employed as a full-time Disney musician, I had to learn to live with a bit more uncertainty after that full-time job ended and Doug went to part-time employment.  Like just about everyone else in America, we had to figure out how to make do with a whole lot less income…about half of what we made before.  But let me tell you…I’m thankful beyond words that we had income at all.  Every time I dropped our mortgage payment in the mailbox this year, I uttered a prayer of thanks.  Our needs were more than met, and we were still able to do some fun things and provide for Noah’s needs as well.  And ya know the craziest part of all of this?  As I look at our bank account and financial records from last year…when Doug was a full-time employee and had a full benefits package…we had LESS money in our savings account than we do now.  So not only have we had every need met and all that…we’ve got more money saved.  I have NO idea how that happened, but it did and I just have to say here that God is GOOD.  And faithful.

When Doug’s job at Disney ended in September 2008, my first concern was for Noah.  How would we even begin to fund his biomedical therapies and DAN doctor visits with the accompanying assortment of supplements and medications?  When we worked our budget based on our “new” income, we quickly realized that we would need to cut way back on all of that.  After about six months of experimenting, we’ve settled into a “bare bones” supplement list.  We’ve replaced prescription medication with Young Living essential oils…with great results.  (The cost isn’t that much less per month as far as oils vs. prescription copays, but we don’t have to worry about the side effects of the medication and we aren’t dependent on a doctor to write prescriptions or monitor Noah’s bloodwork…which leads to less expense overall.  Woo-hoo for that.)  Noah is doing well…his OCD is under control and his gut is healthier than ever.  So as far as Noah’s biomedical protocol goes, God has more than taken care of all of that.

And then there was Soma.

Our lives were radically altered in July when my Mom and I took Noah to spend a week at the Halo clinic.  While we were there, we were handed the keys to help Noah communicate by learning to spell out words.  We’ve still got a long way to go as far as getting Noah to spell for us, but something about that week has unlocked our precious boy and he has made incredible gains since that time.  He’s calmer in social situations and is much more engaged and connected with others.  He is attempting to talk more and has more spontaneous words.  I think that it’s because he knows that we know that he knows.  Ya know?  It’s been amazing to watch.

So I’ve got a ton of hope and excitement going into this new year.

Our church is growing…we’re getting ready to expand our children’s ministry and prepare for a possible third service on Sundays.  Can’t wait to see what this year brings for Calvary Chapel of the Lakes.

I’m looking forward to taking Noah back to the Halo Clinic in March.  And to going back in April for a week of intense training for myself.

I’m hopeful that we will finally get this stinkin’ house sold and get moved up to the Mount Dora area.

And I’m hopeful that God is going to make a way for me to get my uterus yanked out so that I can be done with all of that. I’m just sayin’.

It’s exciting stuff.

Well, I’m off to do some shopping.

I hope that your new year is full of peace and hope and joy.